The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
The Seed that Needs Fire: Paul Hawken on Why the Climate Movement Failed & What Now
Back on Earth Day in April 2024, we started our journey of the Americas with friend of the podcast, legendary best-selling author, Paul Hawken. It was just ahead of the release of his latest book, Carbon: The Book of Life. So we recorded a podcast in his incredible garden about it (along with some other life story stuff).
Later we thought it could be good to record a pod just walking and talking around the steeply sloped streets of his local neighbourhood, among the redwoods - see what this tallest of tree species had to say too. Alas, with both our travels at the time, we didn’t get to it. But having managed to return to northern California a few weeks ago, ahead of flying back to Australia, we did.
And as it happens, Paul’s next book is in full flow. Working title? 'Upstream: Why the climate movement failed and where to from here'. Given this is by the bloke who compiled best-selling volumes Drawdown and Regeneration, this seemed as good a place to start as any - after the redwoods introduce themselves. And after arriving at a powerful analogy for our times, we converge at the end on, well, the wisdom of Dolly Parton.
Recorded 26 July 2025.
Title slide photo by Olivia Cheng.
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Music:
The River, by Peter Cavallo (sourced on Artlist).
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.
Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (sourced from Artlist).
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And do you know where we get all these plants? We get them by the side of the road. Really, yeah, yeah.
AJ:The wild verges.
Paul:Yeah, we didn't buy any of them.
AJ:Yeah, G'day Anthony James here for The RegenNarration, your independent, listener-supported podcast exploring how people are regenerating the systems and stories we live by.
Paul:Not too close. Yeah, you'll have something to say.
AJ:That's right, and we've got top secret discussions.
Paul:It's much too young to hear this stuff.
AJ:Back on Earth Day in April 2024, we started our journey of the Americas with friend of the podcast, legendary best-selling author Paul Hawken. It was just ahead of the release of his latest book, carbon, the Book of Life, so we recorded a podcast in his incredible garden about it. Later we thought it could be good to record a pod just walking and talking around the steeply sloped streets of his local neighbourhood among the redwoods. See what this tallest of tree species had to say too. Alas, with both our travels at the time, we didn't get to it. But, having managed to return to Northern California a few weeks ago ahead of flying back to Australia, we did on our very last day at Paul's place and, as it happens, paul's next book is in full flow Working title Upstream why the climate movement failed and where to.
AJ:From here, given this is by the bloke who compiled best-selling volumes, drawdown and Regeneration. That seemed as good a place to start as any after the Redwoods introduced themselves and later, after arriving at a powerful analogy for the times, we converge at the end. Well, on the wisdom of Dolly Parton Well, mate, we're doing it. Yeah, we're walking. This is great, yeah.
Paul:I'm glad you're in my forest.
AJ:Yeah, and I tell you, leaving this today, I'm just soaking in every smell of it every smell of it, every sound of it.
Paul:A redwood forest is not a typical forest in the sense that typical forests are a hotbed of life, you know, because even non-deciduous but lots of deciduous trees and seeds and things for bark insects to eat, birds to eat them, sounds of the birds, and redwood forests are unusually quiet because the bark of the redwood is inedible to any insect. Is that right? Yeah, and so that's why it lasts so long. Right, it's used because it's resistant to infestation and rot, but you don't hear any birds.
AJ:No, and we were wondering why that was true. Yeah, no, yeah, like when we were up north in the really big stands that were left, that are left, and it was so quiet and we got where no people were and it was so quiet. Right, it was delicious, but it made us wonder yeah, it's like a beautiful tomb in a way yeah.
Paul:Yeah, I know. Yeah, so what made them impervious insects made them extremely valuable to settlers who cut almost all the redwoods down, you know, in California. Yeah, like 95% on top yeah yeah, for housing primarily, but also for any use where it needed to be resistant to insects, rot or water. So we're walking by a fence right here and it's redwood.
AJ:Yeah.
Paul:So it goes on for several hundred feet.
AJ:It's unusual. It's not a common sight to have that sort of wall up here.
Paul:Actually it's against the city regs, Is that right? Yeah, all the neighbors are talking about it.
AJ:Oh, there we go. You can't do that here it's unusual, it looks weird in that sense.
Paul:But there are a lot of animals here in Marin County. I mean, it's not like I'm in some Indian desert or something like that, I'm in the Shropshire hawks and red tails and gosh hummingbirds. Of course I have the garden too, too, but hummingbirds and the robins come in swoop in every spring and, you know, sprinkle the whole place with music, yeah, and song. And then there's uh gray fox which actually slept in our living room during COVID. There's something about COVID that it seemed like animals. I read about even kangaroos, you know, in Adelaide and going down the main street, Well it happened here too.
Paul:Animals just sort of came out of the woodwork, who were always here, but you didn't really see them, and they just felt I don't know. It's like, oh hi, I'm your neighbor and we leave the door open this summer the back door on the deck and we turn the light on. And there was a fox Two of them, wow, yeah, just sleeping Like hey.
AJ:That's cool.
Paul:Why don't you turn the light on Like, hey, they get up and then sort of go out, isn't that awesome? Okay, if you're going to bother us, I They'd get up and then sort of go out and go like Isn't that awesome.
Paul:Okay, if you're going to bother us. I mean, it was so cute, it was so charming, you know, and now it is said or it has been reported, there's about a 120-pound black bear in this neighborhood. Really, yeah, and obviously not, obviously, but not understandably. Uh, some people complained, you know, out of fear, of course, because it was tearing up garbage cans, you know, for looking for food, what else? And the county, to its everlasting credit, said because people ask what are you going to do? And they said nothing. Oh God, yeah, thank God she's like nothing.
Paul:And so when I'm driving home or even walking, so often you'll see a garbage can is just shredded, not the can itself, but everything that's in it, you go oh, she or he, I don't know what sex it is, but it's here Anyway. It's a lovely place to live, obviously, and it also makes me reflect on the climate movement. We've been talking about that, but, as you know, the subtitle of the book I'm writing right now is why the Climate Movement Failed, which sounds like I'm negating the activity and actions and insights that every one of your listeners has, and that's not what I'm saying. Not at all.
Paul:When I'm talking about the climate movement, I'm really talking about the narrative that is used and goes around and is repeated endlessly, both on the news and social media and articles and NGOs and so know, and there's a singularity about the narrative that is completely the opposite of what you and I are seeing right now. We're not seeing one thing that repeats itself. We're seeing extraordinary diversity, even if we don't know it. Or hear the bird sounds and identify them. Or you know, look in the streams and rivers. You know, uh, for the salmon come in, uh, our eyes are telling the truth, which is find one thing that is repetitious yeah you can't.
Paul:And it is also a narrative, but it is a narrative from whence both solutions and brilliance, insight emerge. This is where it comes from. It doesn't come from libraries and books. This is where it comes from in all of history.
Paul:And so when we think of the climate movement, what we're thinking about or not we're thinking about, what we hear is you know, fight, tackle, combat, climate change, climate crisis you know, all these different uh variations on, there's a thing that we have to remedy change, alter, fight, you know, and in that process, unknowingly or without necessarily intentionally, we bother the natural world, we just other. It's like something else out there somewhere and we've gotta do something about it, otherwise we're screwed. And that singularity is the opposite of what the living world tells us, teaches us, what's in our bodies, too. You know. The extraordinary complexity and beauty of everything that's in nature is disembodied or distanced in the climate narrative. But people say, oh, we've got to save nature, save the earth, you know, and talk about the living world as nature Again, as if, well, that's nature and we have to really be careful and do something about it.
Paul:Well, yes, of course, but then who are you? If that's nature, who are you? I mean it's easy to say, oh, we are all nature and so forth, hello, but it's deeper than that. I think it's like there's a threshold. I think possible for everyone, easy for a child, because they've never seen the threshold or created the threshold or been taught the threshold. Seen the threshold, yeah, or created the threshold or been taught the threshold, but a threshold as adults. That is about emergence, like that moment or time or experience where you realize this is me, not in an egoistic sense, but this is me as much as any other me I've ever imagined, and then you look at it with new eyes, you know, and that is the source of real remediation, of transforming the world that we live in today, which is so destructive and so harmful and so degrading to animals, to birds, to nature, to ourselves, to children, you name it.
AJ:We are harming it Even that word jumps out at me the degrading bit, Because then you've got a hint at some of the language and some of the meaning that what about the opposite of degrading? What would that look like?
Paul:revitalize, regenerate yeah, I mean, these words are coming into prominence right now especially regenerate they are yeah yeah, yet.
AJ:Yet you're seeing it still embody the same narrative to a large extent. So that's interesting. The language shifts, the words are sort of being gravitated to, but where is the meaning?
Paul:Well, where is the consciousness that uses the?
AJ:words.
Paul:I mean you think of Charlie Massey or the Haggardys and so forth and say, oh, you're regenerative farmers. Well, yeah, but the experience of being them, those farmers, many, many, many others, is not one like. I'm gonna wake up this morning, go regenerate, I mean, you know it's like thank you for the praise, you know, but what? I'm gonna go outside and I'm gonna look, see, feel, walk, touch, look at texture of the soil, you know. Look at who's showing up in terms of wildlife, the call of the reed warbler, you know, yeah charlie massey's uh book title which is so exquisite, it wasn't.
Paul:I'm gonna save the world, or how farmers can save the world, even right, yeah or how to make better soil, yes, and out of that comes, you know, obviously, insight and practices. That is a relationship with, again in this case you know, soil and everything that dwells upon and within and under it. So again, the language keeps sort of slipping into a kind of simplicity or oversimplification. And then that's why I go back to the climate narrative. The climate narrative is a vast oversimplification on where we are and what to do about it. And out of that you get these yeah, every so often there's a car, yeah, on this road, hey, hi, of where we are. And I want to, I don't want to call it a problem, just like where are we? Well, let's talk about that. That's a really good conversation to have.
Paul:But the reason I called the title the book is upstream is like we're still trying to solve problems downstream. And they're problems, for sure, you know, but, and they need tending, they need remediation, all that sort of stuff, but we're not going upstream to cause. And if you don't look at cause, then the cures are simply symptomatic and our whole medical system is about downstream. Really. That's why the pharmaceutical business is huge. 20% of our economy is in the United States. You know, it's the medical pharmaceutical industry. It's over 20%. And well, why is everybody sick? And there's that Bishop Tutu's homily, which he repeated many times. I kind of rephrased it slightly. But you know, we keep pulling people out of the river and instead we should go upstream and find out who's throwing them in. And we're throwing ourselves in the river, you know, by thinking and seeing the world the way we do.
AJ:Well, you had an acute representation of this hay the other day. You told me about the 1.7 billion dollars just being invested in the. You can describe it. Yeah, this is like, but this is just indicative too, right, it's not the only one.
Paul:Yeah, I mean this was 1.7 billion from Microsoft.
Paul:They do have a lot of money. That's in a company that's going to take food, waste and literally poop, okay, okay from sewage systems and liquefy it all and bury it 5 000 feet under the earth. That's a, that's a carbon solution. In other words, we're going to take this carbon that the living world is producing photosynthesis, you know, it's eating sunlight all day long you know producing sugars in this carbon dioxide when they are break down and digested or whatever and then getting rid of it like well, can we go upstream and say, well, why do we, you know, sequester carbon in the first place? Why we need to do it actively? It happens automatically of course.
Paul:Well, it's because we're burning the lights out in terms of fossil fuels and coal gas. But that's upstream, Like well, why and to what end? And we have to be realistic in the sense that, well, why and to what end. And we have to be realistic in the sense that what I mean, human beings, for as long as we have any history record understanding, anthropologically or otherwise, have always sought the most intense or concentrated form of energy at the lowest price. Yes, no exception. So we're doing that today, you know. I mean I mean coal, gas and oil, right?
AJ:and that you can. You can then extrapolate. Well, I extrapolate two things from that. I go okay, we're not evil, this is just the way we've always been. No, it's wired, and it's why it's hard to change. Yeah and then b. It's why we are still growing emissions. It's why, even with renewables coming on, they're more additional than replacement. And is that just our fate then? Paul?
Paul:Well, so far. Yeah, I mean that's what we're doing.
AJ:We're clearly capable of well, at least in thought, transcending it. And in part, like there's a part of humanity that is transcending it or attempting to, so it's in us Of course. But not as a whole narrative, not as a larger narrative.
Paul:So it's in us, but not as a whole narrative, not as a larger narrative. Well, that's also part of, I think, the delusion of the climate movement is that we're in an energy transition. I mean that is used from the World Economic Forum, down to the IEA, down to the World Bank, down to the Conference of the Parties, you know COP, etc. And you say no, not really, and maybe we will at some point. But right now, as you just said, I mean the incremental energy from solar panels and wind turbines has barely kept up with the growth of energy consumption. So we are using different energy to grow with, you know, grow energy consumption, but we haven't touched the amount of energy we actually combust and consume on an annual basis. Haven't touched it after 20 years of solar becoming more practical, more affordable, more available, and it is, I mean no question about that. But even if tomorrow we could more affordable, more available and it is, I don't have a question about that. But even if tomorrow we could, you know, transform all electrical use to solar and wind, that's 19% of the energy we use. What about the other 81%? That's coal, gas and oil. And we're walking on a road, glad we have it. How do you make this road with electricity. It's crushed rock, it's asphalt, it's tar Slightly different, and it's laid down with big trucks, steamrolled and made to last for decades. Well, okay, how do you do that? With electricity you can't.
Paul:And so there's a great enthusiasm about the conversion from, obviously, fossil fuels to electric cars, evs. Yeah, understandably, we have a much lower footprint in terms of their daily consumption of energy. But they're also talking about there being 3 billion cars in 2050, they being the IEA and all these other economic organizations project growth going to the future. Well, where are the cars going to drive? What roads are these? And the prediction is that by 2050, new highways will circle the earth 600 times For our EVs.
AJ:This is and little of where they're going to park.
Paul:Yeah.
AJ:This is the sort of thing that, again, has been talked about for decades, yeah, yeah, this is the sort of thing that, again, has been talked about for decades, yeah. Yet on we go, which seems to come back to that predisposition, or just habit, over a long, you know, a couple hundred thousand years, of just taking what you can in energy availability, and we just haven't come up against this sort of conceptual need, these leaps that we're being asked to make now. We haven't.
Paul:Yeah, and again I mean, that's the tesla going by us. I'm not criticizing the conversion to evs at all. What I'm saying is what's the thinking here about the cause? And the cause is incredible industrial growth and consumption fed by the largest extractive industry in the world, google. It's taking every bit of information you deposit on the web that it can get its hands on and selling it to people who are advertising, creating social media. I mean targeting you, making sure your life is satisfactory and less. Yes, you get you know some fast fashion from Shane in China. You know and look like.
AJ:All that EV that just passed us.
Paul:Yeah, the cool girls in school.
AJ:Yeah, yeah.
Paul:You know, frumpy, I mean, this is where we have to go, which is what's the anxiety, the insecurity, the vast disconnection that infiltrates our life, that makes us almost reflexively go to consumption? You know, and again, I know I've listened to all your podcasts. I know I'm not talking to your listeners, okay, I've listened to all your podcasts. I know I'm not talking to your listeners, okay, and so I'm not trying to hello, this is not a demonstration or critique or anything like that. No, I'm just looking at the whole, at the thing the so called climate movement is what I'm using and saying we failed we failed, so this is the next bit of your subtitle.
AJ:There's more, there's a second half to your subtitle.
Paul:Yeah, it's like where to go from here yeah, and I look at I again think a lot of your listeners are going there, have gone there or are there. So again, I want to make sure that they don't think I'm being sort of you know a jerk how to suck eggs, as we say.
Paul:Yeah, exactly, not at all, you know, but I jerk how to suck eggs, as we say, yeah, how to suck eggs? Yeah, not at all, you know. But I'm looking at the climate narratives of the climate establishment, you know, and it's like the conference of the parties, you know. It's like somehow we have come to believe, or came to believe that if we got all these important quote-unquote people together from as many countries as possible, because I've just looked up this expanse of grass leading into a house and the goats.
AJ:What I thought were sheep. Oh, they're sheep, but they're not real. They're statues on lawn that's been mowed. There's opportunity in that. Isn't there A lot about real sheep? Because there's grass left. So what do you think the sheep do? Well, that's it. What are they doing? I think about this a lot. Right, because I I see it a lot. The representations of our innate connection, ongoing still, with the living world, and I mean, you may be even longing for it, but certainly connection, yeah, that you see manifest in ways like that where we still want it to be present. Even though it's not Pristine, it does say something. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, what if you did have animals on that grass, not?
Paul:just statues which you should have.
AJ:Yeah, well, exactly, why not?
Paul:We're in a fire-prone region.
AJ:All the more, yeah, but anyway, sorry to interrupt. We're going into another COP soon enough, aren't?
Paul:we yeah, conference of the Party. And then you have all these important people and delegates. In the blue zone there's a green zone where all the NGOs are. You know you separate them. Yes, the activists you over there.
AJ:Yes.
Paul:You know, the people who have been elected and are not going to be re-elected if they actually do everything the cop wants to do are in this zone who kind of argue and fight and stay up all night, you know, trying to pass these resolutions that mean nothing, because since cop 15 in paris and so forth, you know, nothing has really changed. The only two countries that have met the guidelines, uh, are britain and costa Costa Rica, and that's because they have so many forests, not because they did anything special, but the point being is that the underlying belief and this is part of the climate movement is that it has to be solved top-down.
Paul:We have to get the top together, or at least the representatives, and work us out. Well, work what out, if I may ask yeah.
Paul:Is it energy source? You know? What are you burning? What are you consuming? Interesting? Are you going to set targets? Great, nothing wrong with the target, but who are you?
Paul:You don't set targets for individuals. You don't set targets for countries. You don't set targets for countries. There's not a country in the world, hardly, that actually pays attention to the targets.
Paul:They try to adhere to the goals, for sure, but domestic politics and votes, you know, which are usually quadrennial, if not every two years, you know, overrule anything that could come out of that, because people want to be re-elected. So you're taking people who want to be re-elected to make decisions that are far-reaching and to adopt practices that most people, especially the 5 billion people who need more energy, frankly, you know, not less, to adopt, and so, and then we look forward to that every. Well, I don't know if we look forward to it, but, but in other words, we think, well, what's going to happen? You know. Well, this one, you know, I mean, it's going to be different. Well, it'll be different, all right, but it won't be intelligent in terms of how change arises.
Paul:And it's not that change arises from the bottom. I'm not saying it doesn't come from the top, but that idea that there's a top and a bottom is actually mistaken, because in our forest here, where's the top, where's the bottom? That's not how the living world functions, and it's vastly interconnected, complex relationships that are beyond mysterious, of which we know very little and intuitively. Indigenous cultures who lived on the same land for hundreds and thousands of years had much better sense of what was going on in the living world than Western scientists, because they lived there and they depended on knowing the living world, without which they would die.
AJ:Well, this is interesting because that was a very clear dynamic. Then it's still the dynamic. It still is, but it's not clear to us that we are so dependent on this ability to observe and know where you are, even in a body, as we were talking about the other day.
AJ:Let alone on land, yeah, and this comes to our conceptualization then, and narrative. This is why, well, it's always felt important to me, but I guess it's interesting looking at you saying even the people like that would listen to me on this podcast, who are doing awesome stuff in one respect or another yeah, you know, one thing that's often been said is how much do we need to understand what we're doing, as long as it's a good thing.
AJ:But it sounds like you're saying, actually we really do need to understand and to speak the a language and a story or a set of stories that makes sense to the living world.
Paul:I mean, look, I'm a, a white boy, you know, with a genetic mutt, you know from Europe. And it's not for me to start to explain or romanticise Indigenous cultures and so forth, but the fact is we know certain things. Indigenous people knew where they lived.
AJ:They knew where the water was is what they said to me.
Paul:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AJ:Never forgot where the water was is what they said.
Paul:Careful observation passed over generations and generations and generations. You know and we don't know where we live. I mean I'd say we being basically the dominant cultures in the world today and they come out of Western science and industrialism and colonialization and settler mentality and the extraordinary use of fossil fuels to power those cultures. But I would say I mean the following things one is we don't know where we live. We do not know, and we, I often say, the most dangerous pronoun in the world. The second person plural, because who's we?
AJ:but I'm just saying first person plural, you mean oh well, first person plural.
Paul:I said no, yeah, you got it right, cut.
AJ:Make me sound smart, I'll waste you.
Paul:Let's put some blur on his.
AJ:Paul's greatest hits only.
Paul:Oh my God. Okay, end of subject, but anyway, yeah no point, though. No, we don't know where we live. There's more life under the ground than above the ground, literally in terms of biomass and life living creatures. We don't know. I'm talking about land now, not the sea. We don't know what's underneath and the car coming, I think, oh no there's a wind. There's a deer yeah, and the body, our body.
AJ:Look how they move.
Paul:It's so amazing, complex, but most people don't know they're in one.
AJ:Yeah.
Paul:Because they don't treat it that way. What they eat, what they think, what they do, how they move, you know what they breathe? I mean just check, check, check, check, check, check. Do you actually know you're in a body?
AJ:Yeah.
Paul:And do you know? And if you want to be good to go tomorrow and next week and next year and towards the end of your life, you know, let's pay attention, but those principles or those activities or those sensibilities are identical to what we need to become, be express in order to address global heating and catastrophic loss of life on Earth. The consonant. It's not like we're a different creature than blue whales or turtles. We're not. So, again, where to go from here? I hesitate to use the word solutions, but the activities that fully inform a vibrant culture that is renewing, restoring, revitalizing, regenerating, are right in front of our nose.
Paul:It's not like, okay, I'm going to do this technology or this or that, I'll get that. Or you know, I'm going to bury, you know poop 5,000 feet under the ground, a mess, and I'm going to get paid for it because Microsoft needs these carbon credits, you know, to justify this huge amount of energy they're using in their AI, artificial intelligence plants. You know it's like what I mean. It wasn't that long time ago. If you had sort of written that scenario out, somebody would have just laughed at you and said that's ridiculous. Well, bang hoot for AI. Like I'm sure Dare, I say shit in, shit out. No, I won't say that, I mean it's like it's not that simple.
AJ:But AI Dare, I say shit in, shit out. No, I won't say that I mean. It's like that's not that simple, but yes, point made.
Paul:Yeah, yeah, and there's many other, by the way, technologies, quote, quote and proposals to do direct or capture, you know, in other words, capture carbon, like it's a thing you know we're going to got it and got that one. You know, when the whole earth is using that verb, it's capturing carbon every millisecond. Look at what you're looking at Extraordinary amounts of carbon.
AJ:You've just made me think of something funny. What's that? Remember the old Ghostbusters movie? Yeah, catching the ghost. It's almost you could make that analogy to it, that trying to catch the ghost. It's not carbon, but we think it's carbon, we're trying to catch it. I know calling in the experts to catch it and put it through the machine.
Paul:Yeah, we'll be right, mate. That's what I'm saying. That's downstream thinking, yeah, downstream, and good luck, you'll be there forever, yeah, until you die, until the culture dies, till the civilization dies, until all that is harming perishes, because they will perish. And that realization, of course, is really growing and spreading, especially, maybe more especially, with younger people. Older people tend to sort of tuck in, you know, like I want to be safe and have enough money, yes, before I die. Yes and uh.
Paul:I'm not seeing as much leadership as I am in people who are 20 and 30 years old and so forth, but it doesn't matter. Comparison is useless, the point being the growth of understanding about what is truly the activity a human being should engage in to reverse global heating and the catastrophic loss of biodiversity and water and many other things is here, and you know the analogy I use. I think I shared this with you, but when I was a lad and lived in the Sierras, I was a caretaker. I didn't have a home, actually, so I loved being a caretaker because I had a home, but we'd have in the fall.
Paul:This California, just like Australia, it's fire season, you know, opposite time of year, but like Australia it's fire season Opposite time of the year, but in Australia it's fire season, of course, why it's dried out, no rain, doesn't take much to start a fire and there's all that dry brush and grass, so it didn't take much for the fire to spread. Where I lived there was very few fire people. I couldn't afford them. The population was not dense, you know, spread out all over the place, and so everybody knew every young man and boy at that time women weren't on the fire lines as they are now, but was expected to volunteer, yeah, yeah. And then when you did, you were taught the basics. You know, don't fight the fire if it's upwind, things like that. I mean, you know it sounds stupid, but people you know whatever.
Paul:But after the fire we would tamp it down with our boots, and the boots had metal soles and the purpose was to make sure there was no manzanita embers underneath the ash, and manzanita is a hardwood, grows everywhere in California and it will stay red hot for a long time. And so you had to make sure there was none there and if it was, you had to get it out, and so because the wind could come up and blow that ember into the next area where there hadn't been a fire, okay, and then the fire was out, mission accomplished, in the spring, then you would see, same as Australia, luxuriant growth of grasses and I think, wildflowers too for Australia, but certainly for California, you know Like just you know poppies and lupine and it's just like so beautiful. Okay, but there was a big fire here in Berkeley, in Oakland, near the University of California. It was all eucalyptus actually.
AJ:Yeah, sorry about that.
Paul:Yeah, which people brought here in their infinite wisdom to make fence stakes that then twisted into little hook screws into little hook screws, do your homework first. And a really hot fire, as you know, given all the oils, and I think it destroyed 300 homes. It was a big deal getting it out. Nothing seemed to touch it Helicopters.
AJ:When was this?
Paul:Oh gosh, this was about 35 years ago 30 years ago yeah, Still remembered because it made such an indelible mark on that area and impression. But it was near the University of California and botanists were all over it in the spring looking at what was growing and they were identifying wildflowers that hadn't been seen in California for 50 or 100 years.
AJ:Extraordinary.
Paul:Yeah, and anyway, that's called fire-triggered succession, and there are seeds with carapaces that actually will just stay sealed until a certain amount of heat touches it and then it'll break open and germinate. Okay, and so I believe where we are today, as opposed to being sort of linear, we're screwing up. We are, things are getting worse. They are, but it's that the fire and the fire-triggered succession are happening at the same time. So we're well aware of what I call the fire. You know this relentless assault on people, place. You know the living world, on the atmosphere, on water, on the seas, on the. You know, just check off the list. You know there's no place that isn't being assaulted and extracted and degraded and so forth. Okay, and we take in that news. We try to take in small doses, because it's overwhelming and it doesn't really change. It just changes in magnitude.
Paul:place, you know, but what I think, the podcast and the people you've chosen are about the fire-triggered succession which is that in the world today there is an amazing bloom, if you will, of people and communities and farms and NGOs and volunteer organizations and more. Nows you know that are basically, like I say, revitalizing, restoring, renewing life on Earth, and they're not seen in contradistinction at all. They're ignored practically by whatever all the press everybody reads, because they're too small. Yes, yes.
Paul:Too small. They're like, well, yeah, but that's nice. Or if there's a human interest thing there, I'll do that. Or maybe this famous movie star has a regenerative farm, oh great. But they won't really look at the diversity. I mean even like, look at the Haggerty's, you know, okay, they get the award, but look at their community. Look at the how what they do extends out into communities, other places and other people you know, and uh, into universities, to studies, to students, to, you know, farmers who already are facing the same salinization issues you know that they confronted in Western Australia. I mean, it just goes on and on. You can't really map it, you can't see where the boundaries are from who they are, what they do and what their impact is. But that's true for literally a million organizations on Earth today.
AJ:Yeah, I want to come back to that because you're a man who can say, literally because of blessed unrest, that was written yeah 18 years ago and there's almost. We were talking the other day about this book being a form of blessed unrest, a redux. Let's come back to it. But just to hold that fire analogy for a while longer, because when we talked about that I mentioned that bruce pascoe's farm back in Australia, the author of Dark Emu. For those who haven't sort of followed the story, Great book, by the way.
AJ:Great book and really changed Australia and really put him in the gun, by the way too, of people who were threatened by this sort of story coming to light. So there's a there are layers to that story for those who don't know. But he found on his farm after the black summer fires extraordinary I mean again for those who don't know that was upwards of 60 million acres, I think it was three billion animals dead. Uh, extraordinary damage obviously is essentially a whole flank of australia flames. That's five years ago now. And out of that on his land they, partly because the canopy was gone and partly because of the heat and intensity of the fire, that there too was germination, but in this case of ancient plants that they remember in story, but only in story, they'd been gone for so long they had germinated again. So not only is your analogy pertinent, but that's with the most intense fire, right, and that hits me. It's like, okay, well, keep in mind, it's almost no matter how intense things get, you just don't know what it will germinate Exactly.
Paul:I mean it feels ironic or strange to say that our ignorance of the living world and how to live upon it and with it is actually precipitating its eventual restoration. Yeah, it's like. No, no, you're destroying the place, uh-huhhuh yeah, and you're doing it ignorantly and it's not like you want to, you're just doing it, you know. But the damage, you know, which is sort of a hard-witting thing, um, and I'm putting aside children for a minute and women and people, okay, putting that aside, I'm not taking taking that that's inexcusable, in my opinion period always, ever. But in terms of, you know, the so-called natural world, you know that is the living world. We're creating the conditions for a massive renewal, regeneration, revitalization of the world, and the only thing human beings can do is they cannot regenerate the world. Human beings can do is they cannot regenerate the world, they can't restore. That's the point. They create the conditions, yes, or the conditions for its demise. That's what we can do. We create the conditions, and it's how we talk, it's how we relate to each other, it's how we live, it's what we choose, it's what we honor. I mean, these are things that are deeply, I think, within the human character. You know, no matter what you read, and the divisiveness and the stupidity and the proto-fascism that's arising. The fact is, and I think all great religions recognize that, that within human beings is this extraordinary beauty of character, of heart.
Paul:And people ask me, you know, you know, like, don't you feel grief, aren't you grieving? And I said oh yeah, oh yeah. But what is grief? Loss, sense of loss, person place, sense of loss, person place, any number of things. But grief can only arise from love. If you didn't love something, you're certainly not going to grieve its passing. And love originates in the heart. That's where it comes from, and the heart is the organ in human beings that always tells the truth. So grief actually is an opening to.
AJ:To a deeper truth.
Paul:Yeah, yeah, which is within you, not somebody's book or me or someone. No, it's within you, and that's why where to go from here? Ah, well, here, hmm, I mean I'm pointing to my heart, yeah, where'd it go from here? But then what the book is trying to do is give examples and stories and narrative. You know about how that's being expressed in the world. You know, in ways that are very different than you know, the litany of climate solutions. Look, I did draw down. I know what solutionism is, but in a deeper sense, you know the arising of human beings who may well be forgotten they never be honoured but who are actually the seeds of new life on earth.
AJ:When we're talking about blessed unrest and this redux version we sort of both have observed you in a very direct way from blessed unrest, having literally researched the proliferation of the movement in broad terms, if you like, and in those 18 or so years since you've observed an ongoing proliferation which I feel like I'm witnessing too.
AJ:And I said to you, I've questioned hard are you really seeing that? Is this true, or is it my little slice of reality? But it's coming up so far beyond my purview again and again and again and again and again, and that's as my knowledge, and that purview broadens and increases, right so, but it's, it's like way out in front of it and around it and above it, and so this proliferation continues. And, yeah, you felt, by orders of magnitude potentially, and that's interesting too, isn't it, that it seems to bear some kind of evidence to that germination out of out of the intensity of the fire, and when you can despair at the proto-fascist governments and so forth coming in around the world as many do, that there is still this thing growing on the ground, if you like.
Paul:And we can ask ourselves and Bruce, I think, would be the first to agree there's rejuvenation, regeneration, that's happened that he doesn't know how to recognize yeah, yeah, hey in other words, he's only been here for what?
Paul:80 years, I forget, and you know only, and he's only had his experiences, and he's brilliant. But we might not even recognize this emergence completely, because we have our own beliefs about what is or isn't, or what's going on and so forth. I just feel, like you know, there's something happening that is we can't see oh yeah, I'm examining myself, as you speak for for the form of conceit.
AJ:That might have expected me to be able to answer the question am I? Am I to judge? There is, in fact, a regeneration happening or not? Yeah, the form of conceit, even in that yeah to think of everything you're not not seeing yeah and wondrously, so type thing yeah it's interesting, paul, when I think about your trajectory through the books you've written, and of course it's far from all you've done is the writing, but just taking those books as sort of snapshots in time and and the trajectory of your life, in that way that here you are, almost 80 yourself and still inspired to do it, to write, and in a sense, despite the fact that you know that's the first part of your subtitle the climate movement's failed still motivated to write.
AJ:So there's something in you, there's a spark in you out of the fire, and I know you felt the fire. You briefly alluded to it before. Yeah, you felt that really deeply and in fact you know you say the work, yeah, it does, it comes out of that. Even just writing books hard, it comes out of the fire. But I'm really curious about that, as someone who's here lived a brilliant, long life, why there does feel like there's something left to say that burns so strongly that you still write a book about what you're feeling yeah, I mean, I think its origins are a little different.
Paul:The origins are curiosity, you know, as opposed to like seeing an arc of my you know over the years and so forth.
Paul:To me. Each of them arose from curiosity, like I wonder you know, how does this work? Or how could this work better? You know just different questions. But that arose from childhood where, as I mentioned to you, like, I lived in a home that wasn't safe at all. I mean, I mean it is a shit show. And so I went outside whenever I could. And when I went outside it was a completely different world, because inside I could identify well threats. Of course, leave my parents, but you know everything. You know the plug, the light switch, you know the refrigerator, all those kind of things. You know you can master a house if you're two, three years old, in 30 minutes or less. But outside I had no idea what I was hearing, seeing and, just like you can't, you can spend a lifetime actually trying to figure that out as a good scientist. Even so, for me it arose then which? Which is like where do I live? What's going on, what's happening? You know just why, why, why and what, what, what, and so that is still there.
Paul:I am not a botanist, I am. I am not, you know, uh, good at identifying birds. I was part of national audubon Society. On the board I was like the worst birder on the board, I am sure, and the Board of.
Paul:Conservation International and some of the. We had some of the best naturalists in the world that we worked with, and so forth. So I've been alongside those whose skills in this area are just incredible, and for me it's always trying to find the story, and the story is the narrative. You know, that is prevalent or is in some ways taken for granted, but for me, in my books, I'm trying to tell stories, and what I learned is that for a story to have meaning and impact, it has to have two feet on the ground, and and that usually is science there may be other, and if it's not standing on the ground, the story is just blah blah. I'm sorry, but it's like, and there's lots of blah blah around right now, and that's for sure, and so always the the pleasure of writing is actually, you know, discovery, you know, and the realization that there's just some brilliant people out there and doing amazing things, you know. And so, as opposed to what I often do in the morning, which is to sort of do a scan of the world's zeitgeist, and I'll read the Guardian, I'll read the Post, I'll read the Times, I'll read Financial Times and other things, and scanning, scanning like what does the world think it's thinking, or what are people hearing, seeing, reading that is altering their sense of you, know where we are, what's happening, and so forth. So I want to write to the zeitgeist, but at the same time I do that in the morning. If I did that at night I wouldn't sleep because the news is so despicable Children in Gaza right now.
Paul:It's just like unimaginable at this time in human history that one country would do that to children. I mean, just like, it's just mind-boggling. So it's always so. I don't want to exclude that. It's not my job to write about that conflict. That's not the subject of my book, but it's really important. That awareness of it and my feelings of just remembering as a child what it was like to be hungry, what it was like to be unsafe yeah, unsafe, but that's a nice way to put it resonates. You know, not to the degree those children are being harmed, not at all. So it gives dimensionality to the stories and most of the stories are really about heart and brilliance and science and discovery.
Paul:But what are the discoveries? The discoveries are how things are connected. Western science has been disconnecting things since the Enlightenment and saying this is a this and that's a that and those aren't the same things you thought they were. They're not Okay, and we're going to name them. And so, to this day, we have 350,000 names for different chemicals. Good to know.
Paul:And so what we're seeing today in the sciences and quote marks because I think there's many scientists in the world today that don't have degrees is not how things are distinct and separate and have names, but how the world is connected in such vast ways that it's unimaginable.
Paul:And in that, I think that's what we're seeing now is an awareness of what we don't know as opposed to what we do Because we were taught we know this, we know this, we know this, we know this. Here's a book. It's two and a half inches thick. Read it, I mean. They test at the end is you know like, and we had to memorize and make those distinctions and know what is and not a which and so forth, and what I feel like with Western and indigenous knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge are starting to meld and merge and interact in such a way, with great respect to an understanding of what is unknown, what we don't know, what we never thought could be, the way the world quote, quote works. We will never know for sure, of course. But when Zoe Slander writes a book, or monica galliano also, you know that plants speak, communicate, and they're of course laughed at by botanists.
Paul:Not zoe so much, because she's just a journalist, but certainly monica then, all of a sudden, the the anthropological work that has been done over the years, you know, and been dismissive of indigenous people who said oh, why do you use this? Why do you do that? The plant told me and I'm going yeah, right, the plant did tell them. It's like oh, wait a minute, you know, they're absolutely truth tellers and it just didn't fit within our bounds of analysis and reason. So that's an opening that's happening all around the world. It's quite amazing. Yeah, it is. But that's why I'm writing a book, because that's what I get to swim in.
Paul:Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, not my discoveries.
AJ:Speaking of the zeitgeist, we're at a time in the States that's really interesting on a number of levels, different since when we were together walking these paths 15 months ago. We've got an administration that currently looks like we'll succeed in getting food dyes out of foods to a large extent, maybe some other things like it. Yet the cuts to the epa and the usda and so forth and the watchdogs on chemicals in our food system and so forth seem to be a much grander scale. So I know there's all sorts of fractures happening with Magga and Maha and across all these lines it's not playing out in any kind of clear fashion. Let's say it's interesting to have listened to people all over this country and to be observing this that's happening now and thinking I mean you mentioned Big Pharma before what seems to be true is that the way things were maybe the fire wasn't intense enough.
AJ:If I'd drawn the analogy, before but it wasn't gonna shift those big locks and while this obviously isn't addressing it either, it is breaking things apart and all. Let's use the fire analogy it is burning things, and it makes me wonder how you feel about all that that's playing out right now in the context of what we've been talking about. How are you seeing things?
Paul:Well, um, like in terms of Maha Make America Healthy Again, headed up by Robert Kennedy Jr, and taking out synthetic dyes of food, that's some victory. It's been taken out of foods that never should be made in the first place.
AJ:Yes, that's the thing, isn't it? There's a bigger fish in the sense.
Paul:Exactly. In other words, m&ms and candies, fruit loops yeah, just fruit loops and cereals, breakfast cereals and all that sort of stuff. All these things are extremely damaging to our children or to anybody who eats them. And we're seeing taking the synthetic dyes out as some sort of victory. It's not even a pyrrhic victory, it's a fault, it's a delusion. And even then the companies who make these ultra-processed foods are fighting it. You know, I'm trying to prohibit that prohibition, trying to stop it using their political power.
Paul:I see these bones that were tossed. I know a lot of people who absolutely would have voted probably did vote for Biden. The Democrats who voted for Trump because of Robert Kennedy yeah, and make America healthy again and this and that and so forth. So I don't know what they were thinking, but that's their problem. So I mean, what we're seeing is a Hitler's playbook and 2025 understood it very well. And there's a lawyer named Roy Cohn who was Trump's teacher and who knew the playbook very well. And flooding the zone is one of the things you do.
AJ:Yes, this was a film, too that depicted this tutelage, didn't it? Before the election last year? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul:And you know which is. So many things come at you that you can't handle them all and they don't make sense, or they all don't make sense, but it's the same thing. So we're in, I don't know where we are. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know where it's going to emerge. I mean, trump has sort of seized the reins of executive power. That flies in the face of balance of power. You know the United States initiated in 1776, you know the different forms of governance executive, legislative and judicial and so there was a check and balance on power and he's just smashed it and so it very well can be that there won't be any more elections, or it won't be midterm elections, you know, or the next presidential elections, even though in terms of statutes he cannot run again. But he obviously doesn't care about a precedent or meets and bounds. So I just don't know what's going to happen in this country.
Paul:I really was thrilled to see that you didn't fall for it in Australia. You know you're pretty much the same playbook, maybe not as articulately expressed, and I think other countries are pushing back. Now You're seeing in the UK, you know, I mean Farage and the Reform Party making a Trump. Go, if you will, at the polity there. I don't think the UK is going to go for that. They did Brexit. That was stupid. Same people. So I don't know Whatever happens is going to be. I don't think electing a Democrat in three years as the president is going to make a significant change.
Paul:I wish I could say otherwise because, I haven't seen that Democrat and I haven't seen the Democratic Party that doesn't have its head up, as, whatever I mean it's been, it's a gerontocracy. There was a vote on the decision this is just a technical term about the House having to pass something that was passed in the Senate a $9 billion decision and three members Democratic members didn't show up because they're so old and they couldn't get there. So it's a gerontocracy, you know. Rinse and repeat. It's been a really weak party, you know, in terms of leadership and in terms of responding to what people really want. You know.
AJ:Yeah.
Paul:And so you know you always deserve what you get. The United States deserves Trump.
AJ:You know, I saw signs around the country of what we've seen in Australia, where communities decided they deserve something else and made it happen outside the two major well, to some extent now inside the democrat equivalent party as well, and but certainly outside the two major parties, originally, with the independents that were getting elected and more elected just in the election a few months ago, and I saw a bit of that around the states as well. What did you see? Younger people in particular, uh-huh, organizing right and training people to run and to support those who would run.
AJ:Yeah, in whatever, in a party or as independents so that you reform the parties as well to get the whole system being more representative and yeah, not the gerontocracy as well. And, and you know, a bunch of them won, yeah, even even in those prevailing wins that you've described.
Paul:Yeah, no, I, I see that at lower level down ballot. Yeah, no, it's again. It's like five-triggered succession, you know yes, if you're 2024 and you're going. What are you people thinking? And that's to both parties, not just to the Republicans. And like I'm going to, you know, I'm an OBGYN, I'm a this, I'm a nurse, I'm a school teacher, I'm a whatever, and I'm going to run.
AJ:Yeah, yeah.
Paul:Against this incumbent who's been reelected, you know, 17 times every two years, that's right, you know and shows up at the county fair and stuff like that, but you know, so there is that arising and I think that is certainly caused by the outrageousness, you know, of what's happening. The playbook trump godfors in 2025, too, you know. I mean, there's a document and everybody said, oh, look, look at this, he's using this. He said, oh, I've never seen it before, I've never read it. It's absolutely by the book and the author of the book is part of the administration. It was a very clear description of how to wield the executive branch in such a way that it had powers it never knew about or could exercise, or would exercise, or never thought to be exercised by the president. And so, yeah, it's here, and that playbook applies to other countries as well. You know, I mean different types of governing institutions, but the basic techniques are there.
AJ:Yeah, because from the Australian experience it does make me wonder. Conditions on the ground, if they change enough, if communities come together enough, listened enough, it can take the sails, the wind, out of the sails of the ones who would divide.
Paul:Sure, I mean. I think the outrageousness of the activities are definitely waking people up. Yeah, to like what you know, in the United States I don't see People usually vote to pocketbooks here for every presidential election. Am I better?
AJ:off. That was said in Australia too, yeah, but it's sort of shifted.
Paul:They don't vote issues, they vote money. Yeah, so who's to say whether the nation will be done?
AJ:So you know, the other thing I mentioned to you the other day is just really sitting in me. I mentioned that there are a bunch of podcasts and I might write a piece on it, like the podcast that I discovered in going across the country that really stood out, and one of them was Dolly Parton's America.
Paul:Yeah, yeah.
AJ:And you'd heard of it, but you'd not listened to it.
Paul:Definitely.
AJ:And we listened. We're halfway through the series right now. We just listened to episode five. It's already moved me extraordinarily. And episode five Wow, it's already moved me extraordinarily. And episode five wow Because essentially Dolly was asked. Well, her sister even came out and said Dolly should be speaking up. And so the producers of this podcast were saying to her you know what's your thinking? Where do you stand? You're sort of you're seen as this great unifying figure. You sort of don't get up and endorse one candidate or another and clearly people love you across the political spectrum, but some would argue, like your sister now, that in this time you should be speaking. Yeah, and, and and the producer asked a really astute question. She said, in the context of people hurting with this administration, do you ever think am I hurting more people by not saying something now?
Paul:what did she say to that?
AJ:yeah, I was on tenderhooks it's a really good question and she said she referred to and sort of this had been the backdrop of it the, the, was it the emmys? A bunch of years ago 2017, trump's first term when they got together the crew, because they were each winning emmys for one thing or another. So they got together jane fonda, lily tomlin and dolly parton for the first time since nine to five was filmed, you know, 35 years prior or whatever. So it's this extraordinary occasion they're on stage.
AJ:Jane fonda tees off because there's this famous line in the film that we won't stand for your bigoted, hypoc, hypocritic, sexist, you know whatever brilliant line there was in 9 to 5, I can't remember off the top of my head and she said and we're still not standing for your chauvinistic, bigoted and she's aiming it at Trump and Dolly, depends on how you see it but diffused the situation. She made a boob joke and moved on and got the crowd laughing and she said I can always turn to the boob joke, but then she said you know what I really wanted to say? I wanted to say let's pray for the president.
Paul:Oh yeah.
AJ:But I thought I'll get slammed for that too. So boob joke, it is yeah. And I thought wow, that's why she's loved universally. She's not out to get anyone right. Right, and in a way, what more powerful thing is there to say or do that came up for?
Paul:me in a different way. I did a three-month retreat. It wasn't really a retreat, it was caretaking of a empty buddhist refuge center and it was way off in the wilderness and there was no electricity, no radio, no phone, no mail, no, nothing. You're cut off. So I was in silence for three months. Um, wow, no one to talk to you. You know, I mean, it was easy to be in silence.
Paul:And when I came back to Taos, new Mexico, in the truck and I went to a natural food store, first thing starving, and it was just like a cacophony Everybody's talking, you know, I thought, oh my God, look, it's amazing, people just talk and talk, and talk and talk. It's like, of course, but for three months if you're in silence, it is really quite an unusual experience. And these two women walked by and they had, I think, a small child girl, and the mother was saying, oh, she is such a bitch. She was like criticizing somebody else. What I noticed was that the little girl was listening and hearing this and my first was to criticize the mother, you know, saying you shouldn't have. And my mind is going that way.
Paul:And then I listened more carefully, or recounted what I had heard more carefully, and I realized that woman is talking about herself. If you're saying she is such a bitch, who are you talking about? There's something in you, some pain, something. And then I realized you can disagree with me, but everybody, whatever we say, is about us. It's who we are. That just comes out, doesn't matter, it's you. And I thought about that with trump. Um, he's talking about himself and in from a buddhist perspective. He lives in a Vajra hell. There's seven levels of hell. He lives in one of the very, very most painful, worst ones. But out of that came a sense of compassion, because everything you hear him say, he may smile, he may look crowing glamorous, it doesn't matter, he is suffering. Every sentence, every post on Truth, social, everything is his mind. He lives in that mind. That's the hell realm, that's where he lives.
AJ:Up in the envy.
Paul:Yeah, it doesn't mean you're going to put up with it and not try to change things. What I'm just saying is that it actually elicited compassion for that human being like why, who would want to be born that person in this lifetime and spend a lifetime living there?
AJ:so I agree with dolly, yeah. And then, conversely, when you're dolly, and that's what comes out of your mouth, like she really has attained something. Because what the show also pointed out is that her songs have never shirked these sorts of issues, from nine to five and on and prior right, about minorities, women loving a country as a whole what she might have to say she is saying as well. She's clearly doing it in such a way that reaches everybody, even though she's saying it in song form. And then she says that, or would have said that and said that in this moment on that podcast I agree with it.
Paul:I think everybody's a teacher to oneself, but I will say that I do think that people who call themselves teachers and say I'm a teacher are less interesting to me than people who don't know they're the teacher.
AJ:Right on, that's it.
Paul:Yeah.
AJ:And even then as a, I guess, celebrity she wasn't grandstanding. Yeah, she didn't say what she wanted to say.
Paul:Yeah, she's one of our teachers.
AJ:Yeah Well, Paul Thank you yeah. We're full circle back to your house. Come back again. 100% Going to miss you, mate. It's been magnificent to come back and be with you again.
Paul:It's amazing that you know more about this country than I do Far more. You've been to more places. You've experienced more people, communities, events. I am astonished at what you guys have done in 15 months and 25,000 miles in your Honda. It is unfathomably extraordinary in terms of an accomplishment. You guys seem bright and perky and ready to go, so it didn't take anything out of you, but it sure must have been a learning experience the likes of which you couldn't have devised a better learning experience.
AJ:Exactly, I've got your words in my mind right now of not being the teacher. Yeah, we learned in spades and mate right back at you, nearly 80 years so far.
Paul:Yeah.
AJ:What a life, what a journey I'm learning from you. Thanks a lot for having a little walk and talk with me.
Paul:Yeah, this year is the first time I realized oh, next decade is in the 80s, Crept up on you. It doesn't creep up on me, because it doesn't mean anything.
AJ:Yeah.
Paul:It has no meaning. The meaning is what you do, your mind, your life, what you give what you do, what you love your mind, your life, what you give, what you do, what you love your body, of course. And my body is remarkably unscathed yet by disease and so forth. And so I just feel like I'm so fortunate and I don't think of it as like, oh well, now you're 80. Or next year. No, I'm not, I'm just here, I'm doing the best I can, looking into the next, around the next year. No, I'm not, I'm just here, I'm doing the best.
AJ:I can Looking into the next around the next quarter. Yeah, yeah, on you, mate. Thank you so much. Thank you, yeah, that was Paul Hawken at Home Among the Redwoods, with great thanks to you, generous paid subscribers, for making it possible. Special thanks this week from AJ to SJ, new paid subscriber, doing great work of his own in Japan, with some common ground too with Aussie legend Leunig and an old favourite film, baghdad Cafe. Thanks too to Paul Vergnot and Nikki Thompson for being paid subscribers for three years now. I can't tell you how grateful I am for you sticking with me over those years. We'd love you to join us if you can get some exclusive stuff like discounts to a series of upcoming events and help keep the show going by heading to the website or the show notes and following the prompts. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.
